{"id":4052,"date":"2020-09-16T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/wlss-day-1\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:05:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:05:10","slug":"wlss-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/wlss-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Search Summit &#8211; Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Day 1 of our first virtual Local Search Summit is complete.&#x1f64c;\u00a0 We know it was a jam packed day filled with a ton of information from awesome speakers. If you were too busy watching and forgot to take notes, we&#8217;re shining a spotlight on three talks today and sharing all the highlights, insights, and takeaways.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#WLSS Day 1 Talk Showcase:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#attributes\">Review Attributes \u2013 The Biggest Change to Reviews in a Decade<\/a> &#8211; Mike Blumenthal<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#links\">Meh, Links: A Process for Identifying Local Links That Generate Customers, Leads, and Search Visibility<\/a> &#8211; Gyi Tsakalakis<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#utm\">Attribution Wizardry \u2013 Winning at GMB with UTM Codes<\/a> &#8211; Claire Carlile<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Get Video Access to Local Search Summit 2021\/2020<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Want to deepen your knowledge and learn new tactics and strategies to improve your rankings and conversions from local search? Then our Whitespark Local Search Summit video bundle was made for you! For $199USD you will get access to all of the talks from 2021 and 2020.<\/p>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67360 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Mike-Blumenthal.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Mike Blumenthal (<a href=\"https:\/\/gatherup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GatherUp<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Review Attributes &#8211; The Biggest Change to Reviews in a Decade<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Review Attributes are a feature that allows consumers to leave a \u201ccritical\u201d or \u201cpositive\u201d quality rating with their reviews in a few short clicks. This is available to almost all service based businesses and is the biggest change to Google reviews in 8 years!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-67367\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Review-Attributes-1024x464.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"464\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google review attributes are available in Display and Maps, but once published in a review you can only see them in Search. Do not confuse these with Place Topics, which are machine learning\/artificial intelligence assessment of the critical themes in reviews; which often retrieve\/generate irrelevant categories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-67384 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Review-Places-Topics-1024x434.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"434\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are variations of attribute choices available by industry and the combinations will always include 1&amp;2 :<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quality,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Professional,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Value,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Responsive,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Time,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reliable,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clean,\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Communication\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you don\u2019t know which grouping your business has, try to leave a review and see what combination comes up. <\/span>=<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Review attributes are defined by the <strong>Primary Category<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These attributes are only showing up for service related businesses.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, they&#8217;re not available to car dealers and jewelry stores, but showing up for the custom jeweler and lawyer categories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gatherup.com\/blog\/list-of-google-review-attribute-categories\/\">Google review attributes are visible in over 275 categories<\/a>, however Mike believes it trends toward 500 of Google\u2019s 4,000 categories (hot damn that\u2019s a lot of categories).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why are they so important?<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reviews have been one of two types since the days of CitySearch and before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rating Only &#8211; just a rating with 5 data points (stars).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rating + Written Review.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But there was no way to standardize the review content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GatherUp looked at 2,778,965 reviews and found that 34.5% were rating only reviews. From the searching consumer&#8217;s point of view, a rating doesn\u2019t tell them much, a customer was happy or unhappy but they don&#8217;t know why. Ratings alone also don\u2019t tell the business much, what did they do wrong? And they doesn\u2019t tell Google much, what is the problem in this situation?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-67365 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/34.5-Rating-Only-Reviews-235x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"235\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Problem<\/strong>: In search results, Google compresses the ratings and you will often see that many businesses have largely the same number of reviews and same rating. This creates a problem from a consumer, business, and rankings point of view. <\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Compressed-Ratings-in-Results-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Solution: Review attributes\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A solution to rating-only reviews<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They\u2019re very easy &#8211; consumers love them. Point, click and you\u2019re done.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Provides an expansion of content and context<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Increases review data points from 5 to 25<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More granular distinctions between business<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Improved entity understanding<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many future possibilities<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Attribute Values Relating to a Rating on a Points Scale<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This essentially gives Google the ability to solve the bunching problem in search results, in terms of whatever value they give to ratings. It also gives Google a quantitative difference to understanding one business, versus just a qualitative difference.\u00a0<\/span><strong>Google Attributes are Semantic Triples\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Semantic Triple &#8211; Is a format of data that enables the machine to represent knowledge in a way that they can read it and understand it. It can be unambiguously queried and reasoned about.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Subject &#8211; the entity<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Predicate &#8211; what\u2019s happening to it<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Object &#8211; what is being applied to the subject<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Semantic-Triple-Example.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google loves this stuff! It helps them dramatically increase entity understanding &#8211; they not only know where the business is located, what the ratings are, what the reviews are, they now have sophisticated data providing understanding about the business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>How Do You Track Google Review Attributes?<\/b><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right now you cannot see these in your GMB dashboard, they are only visible in search results. But, if you use <a href=\"https:\/\/gatherup.com\/\">GatherUp<\/a> or our <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/reputation-builder\/\">Reputation Builder, the tool will track your Google review attributes<\/a> for you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Why Monitor Google Review Attributes?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s valuable review content and context you need to know.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s content searchers (your potential customers) will look at.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are widespread in most service-related categories now.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Consumer engagement is already high.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Multiple future implications for Google search and presentation.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Attribute Opportunities<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Standardized satisfaction metrics<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Suggest High Intent Keywords<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content Driver<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Competitive Analysis<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marketing Value as Social Proof &amp; Web Content<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/google-review-attributes-monitoring\/\">Monitoring your Review Attributes<\/a> helps for your business be accountable and really show up in your service work. If you want to be seen as the company that is always on-time, how can you follow through with that if you aren\u2019t getting those attributes?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many businesses look at reviews as a one and done tactic, but reviews are rich resources you need to be utilizing. Why leave a review on the shelf? Share it on your website, share on social, and take the time to analyze it. Don\u2019t have a siloed view when it comes to reviews. <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Turn your reviews into your sales force.\u00a0 <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mine your review content to identify weaknesses in your business that you need to improve on. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Highlight the things that people like about your business on your website and other content sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67368 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Gyi-T.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Gyi Tsakalakis (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.attorneysync.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Attorney Sync<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Meh, Links: A process for identifying local links that generate customers, leads, and search visibility<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gyi is well known in local search circles for his catch-phrase \u201cmeh, links\u201d which is the most succinct way of saying,<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAll other SEO factors considered, it\u2019s probably the links that are making the difference in why one business is outranking another\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You will hear a lot from people within the industry that &#8220;links are way oversold, all you\u2019ve got to do is create great content, fix your site, incorporate searcher intent, create for users, add Schema&#8230;&#8221; Yes, all of that is important&#8230; <strong>BUT the difference maker is the links<\/strong>. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Re-frame your mindset around local link building, especially in competitive verticals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s time to correct your myopic view on link building and stop thinking about everything you\u2019ve ever learned. So many people are too nearsighted with their link building, too focused on that direct connection with trying to rank. Open your mind to new concepts in local link building. Go beyond the context of rankings and start thinking about it in terms of a business development strategy.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disclaimer: Do your own tests! Trust your own data. What works for one client in one industry may not work for another. Put your own systems in place for tracking and put a premium on your own data. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What metrics should we focus on for local link building? <\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relevance<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Linking Root Domain<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don&#8217;t focus on overall link numbers, but rather increasing the number of linking root domains. Yes, your industry can be competitive, but by targeting and going really deep on relevance (both topical and geographical) you can outrank some pages that have more linking root domains<strong>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For local link prospecting you can pretty much <\/span><b>ignore Domain Authority (DA) <\/b>and focus on r<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">elevance instead by identifying relevant prospects, both <\/span><b>topically and geographically<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What about nofollow links? For local link prospecting, <\/span><b>don\u2019t exclude nofollow<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of link builders won\u2019t put a site on their prospecting list because they know they don\u2019t provide follow links. HUGE MISTAKE.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Google-on-No-Follow.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you acquire local links, even with no-follows, they do have an impact overall and they do something else: generate customers and leads.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Anchor Text<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; For local link prospecting, don\u2019t obsess over anchor text. Where you can get it, great, but don\u2019t stress about it overall. Brand and \u201cjunk\u201d anchors are fine. Don\u2019t remove a prospect from your list just because you can\u2019t optimize anchor text.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Scale<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; For local link prospecting, you can\u2019t scale and <strong>y<\/strong><\/span><b>ou don\u2019t need to scale<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Think hyper-local, geographic and topical relevance.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You don\u2019t need to be getting thousands of links in the local context in order to beat competitors. <\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scale-Local-Relevance.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><b>Must Link<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; For local link prospecting, <\/span><b>don\u2019t ignore linkless citations<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. If you can get the link get it, but don\u2019t dismiss sites simply because they have a no link policy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>$$$ &gt; Traffic &gt; Rankings<\/strong> &#8211; Your links can generate revenue, customers, leads, sales, and traffic. Money and traffic beat rankings every time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Target Audience Local Link Building\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Build out your target audience persona, prospect link targets like you would buy media. This will help you build out a list of sites where your customers will actually go.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Target-Audience-Chart-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think about this in the context of local awareness, interest, and consideration. Local news and events are the money makers. Start building relationships with journalists, go in and comment where you can, get active in your community. Whether you\u2019re speaking, participating, or sponsoring a local event, link these topically-relevant local events. They can really move the dial from a link building standpoint.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Local Directories<\/strong> (both industry and geographic specific) &#8211; Make sure your information is accurate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Who: Demographics + Psychographics\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where you can find patterns in terms of age, socioeconomics, etc. &#8211; what keeps those people up at night &#8211; think about this, as it will tell you where these audiences spend their time online and what sites they are looking at.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What Are They Searching Locally?\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Go super hyper-local: neighbourhood, specific areas, and streets. If you\u2019re focused on super hyper-local areas, that&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll see bang for your buck within the radius of the search area for your business location.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What Ranks Locally?<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The best indicator of whether Google thinks something is relevant or popular is if Google ranks it themselves. Find the different sites that rank locally and put them on your prospect list. The most relevant type of link you could get would be from a competitor that does the exact same thing as your business. Obviously they aren\u2019t going to want to link to you. But think about tangential businesses, what about other businesses that don\u2019t compete with you?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dive deeper into the results, go beyond the first page and you will start to find options.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Share-of-voice-example.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Best Local Link Building Tool: Google\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use advanced search operators such as inurl and intitle to prospect for links. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[something your <\/span><b>target audience<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> might also search for] + inttitle:[hyper-local geo-modifier]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the hyper-local modifier, you want to go deep like the neighbourhood or street.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Second Best Local Link Building Tool: Maps<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Put your own business address in and start to look at all the different businesses around your physical location. The proximity of getting local links from businesses that are in your own area makes a big difference. Ideally they are also topically relevant. For example, a Personal Injury Lawyer can get links from rehabilitation businesses or ancillary services clients might be using locally.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Leverage Google Maps by using your own address, zooming in and looking around. Think about:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who are the businesses around me?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How could I work with them to get a link? <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are my options and what are the businesses that could link to me?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Hyper-Local Content Marketing For Links<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Topically relevant content.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scholarships in the traditional sense may be dead, but if it\u2019s local across the target audience, topic, and local to your area that can be a solid win.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guest Post can be powerful if it\u2019s a real local blogger, locally and topically relevant.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>==<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you focus only on Domain Authority for your local link building campaigns, you\u2019re going to end up missing out on opportunities that are both topically and locally relevant, which are both way more important and stronger signals\/factors when it comes to earning links as a local business.\u00a0<\/span><b>Pro Prospecting Tip: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Doing your prospecting through Google &#8211; Gyi loves to use the MozBar (a Chrome\/FireFox extension) that allows you to export all the Search Results into a CSV. If you tack on a little parameter <\/span><b>&amp;num=100<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the URL after you run the search, you can get all 100 search results exported in a spreadsheet and work through that, rather than drilling through the results. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local link building is a grind &#8211; embrace the suck!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Re-framing is critical and will help you during all your link building campaigns. If you hold yourself accountable for topical and local relevance, the list isn\u2019t as long as you think.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about going out and trying to get 100s of linking root domains, it\u2019s about trying to get like 25 solid ones. Spend the time getting to know the business or site you\u2019re trying to go after. From an email outreach standpoint, if you\u2019re cold emailing you\u2019re not going to get a lot of traction, take the time to develop rapport with the business to get more positive and engaged responses to your outreach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In local you don\u2019t need the volume, you need to be relationship-focused and locally-focused.\u00a0<\/span>==<\/p>\n<h3>Get the Local Search Summit 2021 &amp; 2020 Videos<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Deepen your knowledge and learn new tactics and strategies to improve your rankings and conversions from local search. Get our special video bundle that gives you full access to all sessions from our 2020 &amp; 2021 Local Search Summit events!<\/p>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67374 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Claire-Carlile.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Claire Carlile (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.clairecarlilemarketing.com\/\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Claire Carlile Marketing<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Attribution Wizardry &#8211; Winning at GMB with UTM Codes<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why add UTMs?<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a marketer, you need to demonstrate the excellent value of your work to an organization, as well as demonstrate the value GMB can add.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mobile browsers and apps typically don\u2019t send referral info to Google analytics and often the traffic gets misplaced in the direct traffic bucket. When there is no UTM in place, organic and direct clicks gets muddled and this information doesn\u2019t get sent to analytics. Also, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GMB insights are lacking: they don&#8217;t tell us the true number of people who click through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What can I tag in GMB?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Primary links (website\/menu\/appointments)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Posts (CTA links)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Products (products on the website)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New follower offer (welcome offer)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>=<strong>The ROI on 5 mins work:<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here&#8217;s an example of creating a new follower offer. It sits there quietly driving traffic and interested parties to the website, but interestingly is also driving sales! While it&#8217;s only generating a very small number of sessions, it took us five minutes to create and has an e-commerce conversion rate of 21.43%. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adding the new follower offer is a bit of a no-brainer if you&#8217;ve got the type of business that is going to attract a local following on Google Maps. Anyone that follows you will have your Google Posts pushed directly into the For You tab under Updates in the Google Maps app. That new follower could be the gift that keeps on giving in terms of revenue. You have to download the GMB app for your business to access the Welcome\/New Follow Post type&#8230; But it may be worth it for your business!\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Claire-Follow-Feature-GMB.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>UTM Tagging Tips<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stick to naming conventions &#8211; Take the time to carefully plan the structure of the tags so that you don&#8217;t get messy data. Messy data makes it so hard for you to show your value and it&#8217;s a pain when you have to clean it up. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be really consistent with your tagging and have it all planned out from the outset.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep them lower case, Google Analytics is case sensitive.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check the URL that you are tagging. If it already includes the query parameter replace the \u2018<strong>?<\/strong>\u2019 at the start of your UTM tag with a \u2018<strong>&amp;<\/strong>\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>UTM Tagging Example<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Add website URL (home page, location page, product or service page, etc.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source (where the link lives)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Medium (broad bucket for marketing channel \u201chow did it get there?\u201d)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campaign: different campaign names for different Google posts (e.g. gmb-whats-new-post, gmb-offer-post)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content: 10-percent-offer, summer-sale, new-opening-times<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Claire-UTM-Tagging-Tips.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>UTM Source vs Medium:<\/b> Think of a click through of a UTM tag as a journey. The <em>source<\/em> would be where the journey started and the <em>medium<\/em> would be the method of transport.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using UTM tags will show us the actual monetary value the GMB clicks are driving. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it&#8217;s not always about revenue &#8211; micro-conversions for the win!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What conversions and micro-conversions is GMB driving on your website?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did they click your social media profile? <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did they sign up for your newsletter? <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did they click to call? <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do they fill in the contact form?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Do they submit a review? <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And anything else that&#8217;s important to your business or organization. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All you need to do here is make sure that your goals in Google Analytics are mapped out against your key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you&#8217;re measuring what&#8217;s actually important to your organization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GMB is assisting in conversions.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Claire-How-much-is-GMB-making.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assisted conversions attributed to \u00a395,000 within a look-back time frame of 30 days prior to the conversion. I<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">n the 30 days prior to the conversion, the GMB website link contributed to the conversion journey of 7,483 conversions.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s important to consider the Google My Business links and you need to think about their role in exposing your potential customers to your brand in the early stages of the customer journey, as well as the GMB role in supporting and driving consideration in the middle of the funnel.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Claire-Assisting2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Search Query Data &amp; Performance in Google Search Console\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make the most of this data while it&#8217;s still there in Search Console (GSC). <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Log in to GSC, go to the Performance Report, you can add a page (&#8230;) filter that will act as a catch-all for all your GMB tagged URLs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You&#8217;re essentially asking Google to include URLs containing UTM campaign = GMB. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once the filter has been applied, GSC will give the data on clicks, impressions, average click-through rate, and average position for the URLs that contain GMB<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Now you&#8217;ve got all of this lovely data that can be used for our search query research and to help you understand your existing organic visibility and how and where you can improve.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 1 of our first virtual Local Search Summit is complete.&#x1f64c;\u00a0 We know it was a jam packed day filled with a ton of information from awesome speakers. If you were too busy watching and forgot to take notes, we&#8217;re shining a spotlight on three talks today and sharing all the highlights, insights, and takeaways. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"Google Review Attributes, Local Link Building &amp; UTM Tagging Guide for GMB | WLSS Day 1 Spotlight","_seopress_titles_desc":"From Day 1 of Whitespark Local Search Summit: the biggest change to Google Reviews in 8 years; how to get local &amp; topical links; and a UTM tagging guide for proper attribution.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"classification":[],"class_list":["post-4052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4069,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions\/4069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4052"},{"taxonomy":"classification","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/classification?post=4052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}